Painted Black

by Greg Kihn

“I’m stoned …” Clovis said. “That’s some strong shit, man.”

  Brion Gysin entered the café looking like something out of a Hollywood biblical epic. He was dressed in a long white robe and sandals.

  “Going native?” Brian said as they shook hands. “You look more Moroccan than the Moroccans.”

  Gysin was deeply tanned and wore a small fez on the crown of his head. His piercing blue eyes sparkled.

  “When in Rome, dear boy …”

  “These are my colleagues Clovis Hicks, recording engineer, and Bobby Dingle, photographer and antique dealer.”

  “This is Mahmoud, my house boy.”

  They shook hands. Gysin and Mahmoud pulled up chairs. Gysin ordered strong Turkish coffee and sweet Moroccan pastries. The hash pipe came to life again, and the air turned thick and lazy.

  Gysin said, “I am prepared to take you to record the Master Musicians of Joujouka. You’re in fantastic luck, because the Pipes of Pan Festival starts this weekend.”

  Brian gave the thumbs-up.

  “We’ve got portable recording equipment. We’re ready to rock, man. Now, just exactly where is Joujouka?”

  The way Gysin looked directly into your eyes when he spoke was somewhat disconcerting, and Bobby could see Brian squirm under his unblinking gaze.

  “Joujouka is in the Rif Mountains, about sixty miles south of here. Deep in the country, my friend. I took William Burroughs there, and it blew his mind. And Bill’s mind is hard to blow. It’s like going back four thousand years.”

  “And the music?”

  Gysin smiled.

  “Trancelike. Passionate. Extraordinary. The pieces rise and fall, reaching crescendo after crescendo. Sometimes one song can last indefinitely.”

  “I hope we can fit it all on one reel.”

  The coffee arrived at the table. Gysin spooned in some sugar and stirred. His voice was soft. One got the feeling that he’d given this speech before.

  “The Master Musicians of Joujouka all come from one incredibly huge, ancient family. Their music has been handed down for generations, from father to son. It’s amazing when you think about it. Bill Burroughs called them the world’s only four-thousand-year-old rock band.”

  Brian sniffed.

  “Kinda makes the Stones and the Beatles seem somehow … insignificant.”

  “A man named Hadj Abdessalam Attar is their leader. I know him. He’s a good person. I’m sure he will cooperate with the recording. He worked with Ornette Coleman when he came here several years ago.”

  A disturbance in the streets outside caused them to look out the window. An old man beat a young boy with a cane. Mahmoud thought the kid had stolen a piece of fruit.

  “That’s a serious crime if the both the boy and shopkeeper are Moslem.”

  By now, a crowd had gathered, and the kid was being dragged away by the wrists. The boy fought violently. Excessive force subdued him.

  “What are they gonna do, cut off his hands?” Clovis asked, half-jokingly.

  The somber expressions of Gysin and Mahmoud silenced him. Brian turned away from the window and swatted a fly off his cup.

  “What kind of place is this?”

  Gysin used his hands when he spoke, illustrating the sentences with elaborate gestures.

  “Tangier? It’s a beautiful anarchy, my friend. There are three official languages; French, Spanish, and Arabic, but most people speak a little English. Two official currencies, the peseta and the franc, but dollars and pounds are welcome, too. Almost everything is legal—drugs, prostitution, homosexuality. Legend has it that Hercules killed the giant Antaeus and buried him here. Apparently, he had the hots for Antaeus’s wife and she for him. Antaeus is the god of losers. Tangier has always been an open city. Matisse lived here at one time.”

  Brian raised an eyebrow.

  “I had no idea.”

  “This is a very old town. The foundation of the building you’re sitting in dates back to the time of the Roman Empire.”

  Clovis looked at the floor.

  “Jeez …”

  Gysin continued. “The music can be traced all the way back to ancient Egypt. These people still worship the great goat-god Pan whose followers stretch back into the dawn of antiquity, centuries before Christ.”

  The crowd outside dispersed as the heat pressed down on them.

  “That’s some mighty old shit.”

  Gysin laughed. “Yes, some mighty old shit, indeed.”

  Brian cleared his throat.

  “Will we be able to communicate with them? Can we jam? What language do they speak?”

  “Slow down. One question at a time. Even though there are three official languages, Morocco actually has eleven languages, two of them nearly extinct. In the section of the Rif Mountains where we’re going, they speak Ghomara, one of the almost extinct languages. Luckily, Mahmoud speaks Tarifit, which is quite similar to Ghomara. Hadj speaks a little English, plus some standard Arabic, so we’ll get along just fine. Besides, once the music starts, there is only one language.”

  “I can’t wait to get started.”

  Gysin grinned.

  “A Rolling Stone and the Pipes of Pan. This, I’d like to see.”

  “What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?” Brian said.

  Bobby said, “I’ve got to see someone about a pigeon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The famous Moroccan racing pigeons. The son of one of our English diplomats raises these racing pigeons right here in Tangier. His name is Kevin Cheswick and he’s the son of Sir Alfred Cheswick. They live in the British mission right here in town.”

  “Why on earth would you want a racing pigeon?”

  Bobby smiled.

  “That’s my secret. Now tell me about that auction.”

  “A local shaman died, the last of a very long line of shamans. His estate is being auctioned to pay creditors. I think there might be some rather esoteric, one-of-a-kind items available. Care to view the merchandise with me?”

  Bobby said, “Absolutely. I’m on a buying trip while I’m here.”

  “Then you should come along.”

  Clovis shook his head. “I think I’ll skip the auction. You guys go and have your fun. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  One hour later, Brian Jones, Brion Gysin, and Dust Bin Bob were at the auction house—a huge, smoky room full of sweaty men of all nationalities. A large water stain on the ceiling resembled a map of Sri Lanka. Business was conducted in rapid-fire French and moved quickly. Items they had viewed earlier were brought out and placed upon a table where a one-armed auctioneer presided.

  Bobby bid on several ornamental boxes, rugs, and tapestries, purchasing all of them. Gysin did the same. Brian, on the other hand, seemed bored. He wasn’t really keen on any of the stuff and acted indifferently throughout.

  That is, until an odd little mirror went on the auction block. Bobby noticed it at the viewing. It was about the size of a standard eight-by-ten photograph. A frame of black, polished stone, carved with tiny hieroglyphs, surrounded a rectangle of smoky, uneven glass. When Brian looked into it, the reflected image was slightly distorted.

  “That’s that weird little mirror you were looking at,” Bobby said. “Might be a valuable antique.”

  Gysin gripped Brian’s arm.

  “That’s a very special mirror. Buy it.”

  Brian raised his hand, and the auctioneer began babbling incomprehensible phrases at warp speed. The veins on his neck stuck out like vermicelli. Brian, with Gysin’s help, outbid three other guys and bought the mirror.

  “What did you mean, special?”

  “Magic,” Gysin whispered. “Ancient, beautiful, actual magic. That mirror is for gazing; scrying some call it. It’s a form of meditation. It’s said to open the third eye and cause
the gazer to see amazing things. Some believe that Nostradamus was a mirror gazer and wrote many of his quatrains after gazing into the glass. Mirrors like that have been found in tombs over a thousand years old.”

  Brian beamed.

  “And now it’s mine. All the posh birds of London will powder their noses in it. Maybe we’ll use it to snort coke off of. It’s a trip, man. Dig it, I own a magic mirror.”

  Gysin’s voice modulated down a half-step. “Don’t make light of it, my friend. You, of all people, should be receptive.”

  Brian’s eyes were bloodshot. They’d been smoking hash and drinking wine all day, and Bobby knew Brian had to be pretty whacked by now. Bobby became suddenly worried. Maybe the mirror is fucked up; maybe buying it was a bad idea. Maybe it’s evil. Maybe, in the light of day, they’d regret it.

  “That thing gives me the creeps, man.” Bobby said. “I think it’s evil. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  Brian seemed genuinely amused. “Dusty, I’m surprised at you. Evil? Afraid of it, are you?”

  Bobby tried to laugh but produced only a dry, coughing sound, like low water pressure through turn-of-the-century English plumbing. Brian eyed Bobby.

  “You bloody wimp. You’re looking at a man who just recorded a song called “Sympathy for the Devil.” Come on, man. I wrote the book on all that demonic shit. I’ve been to the edge and looked over the rim, and you’re afraid of a fucking mirror?”

  “I’m just sayin’, if this was a horror movie, you buying that mirror would be act one.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Master Musicians of Joujouka

  The next day at dawn, Brian, Clovis, Dust Bin Bob, Brion Gysin, and Mahmoud set out for the Rif Mountains. Brian had the mirror with him. Bobby could feel it’s unnatural weight when he loaded the bags into the back of the Land Rover. Although Clovis thought the mirror was nothing but a harmless antique, Bobby had begun to believe that the mirror really did harbor some kind of evil magic. He avoided touching it.

  Mahmoud drove south through the sunbaked towns and Bedouin camps. Outside Tangier, the road simply vanished beneath their tires, and the desert swallowed them. Off to the south, they could see the blue ridge of foothills to the Rif Mountains. They looked ominous to Bobby. Brian suggested Bobby start taking pictures of the scenery, but every shot he took seemed the same.

  “I want you to document everything,” he said.

  Hours passed, the mountains drew closer, and the land changed from arid desert to rolling hills. Mahmoud proved to be an excellent driver and navigated the Land Rover through the valleys until the terrain became impassable.

  “We’ll have to go on foot from here. The village is not far, just a few miles.”

  They climbed a mountain pass with the tape recorders on their backs and cameras swinging from their necks. Mahmoud carried two knapsacks full of blank tape and film canisters.

  The mirror was in there, among Brian’s toiletries. Bobby felt glad he wasn’t carrying it. It occupied his thoughts as they walked. The damned thing had been owned by some very strange people over a very long period of time, and Bobby could only conjecture the peculiar things it had reflected over the centuries. Were those images trapped forever behind the warped and uneven looking glass?

  They walked into the village of Joujouka at dusk. The festival was already in full swing. Bobby realized at once how far from Western civilization they had come. All the creature comforts they took for granted were absent: lights, electricity, phone service, plumbing, paved roads, restaurants, hotels. Nothing was familiar here. To Bobby, it was off-putting, and he felt even further removed from his home. Burroughs was right; it was like traveling back four thousand years.

  None of it fazed Brian. He was in a state of musical euphoria.

  “Oh my God, we’re missing all this great music! Quick, Clovis, get the equipment set up as soon as you can.”

  Gyring calmed him down. “It’s okay. The festival goes on for days, and there will be lots of music to record. This is just the warm-up group. Why don’t we secure lodging for the night and have some dinner first?”

  “You mean that’s the support act?”

  “Things happen at their own pace here. Your job is to adjust to it, not fight against it. The real ceremonies get under way tonight. You absolutely don’t want to miss that.”

  Mahmoud had relatives in Joujouka and arranged for them to stay in the house of an uncle. The uncle killed a goat and cooked the meat on skewers over an open fire.

  The people of Joujouka were quite taken with Brian’s appearance. The man with the long golden hair and colorful clothes drew a crowd wherever he went. They had never seen anything like him. Brian, a mystical shaman in his own right, was one of the Master Musicians of London, a fellow seeker of truth, and he had come all this way to see them. They treated him like royalty. Bobby got the feeling they would still be talking about it years from now; the time the man with the golden hair, the great Brian Jones, came to their village.

  As the sun set, Clovis placed his microphones on boom stands around a hilltop, bordered on one side by a high stone wall, which he figured would act as a big resonator. The musicians gathered for their evening performance. Gysin cautioned Bobby and Clovis not to be surprised by some of the aspects of the Pan Festival, namely the dancing, which he said could become quite frenzied.

  “Whatever happens, just go along with it. If it gets to be too much for you, duck down and move away.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Before Gysin could answer, the first notes of the evening concert began.

  Fifteen rhaita players blew a shrill fanfare on their oboelike double-reed horns and a line of drummers pounded a rumbling, complex beat. Clovis listened through the headphones, adjusting the levels to capture all the instruments. The scene was lit by several bonfires, casting eerie shadows into the night.

  Just as he arrived at a workable mix, Clovis’s attention was distracted by a naked old man, standing between the drummers and the horn players. At first, he just seemed like one of the throng, another pilgrim here to see the festival. As he began to move, Clovis realized he was much more than an onlooker. He had to be part of the ceremony. The naked old man started to dance, and within minutes he was jumping around like a twenty-year-old London mod on speed. His wrinkled, sunbaked skin shook and shivered as he stomped the ground, testicles bouncing like tiny burlap sacks, penis flapping comically, and a set of large dry hemorrhoids quivering like sea anemones. It was not a pretty sight. He had incredible energy for such an old man.

  The music seemed to drive him insane. Something gleamed in the firelight. A large knife appeared in his hand. The band played louder and faster; the old man whirled like a dervish.

  Clovis looked at Brian and Gysin who were enthralled by the music and didn’t seem to notice the old man. How could they not? A naked old man with a Bowie knife is hard to miss. The knife flashed, and, for a fraction of a second, their eyes met.

  Clovis had never seen eyes like that. They were completely crazed, without fear, capable of anything. The eyes of a maniac. He wanted to look away, to scream, but the old man held Clovis in his gaze. Then he stuck his tongue out at Clovis and spun away.

  What the fuck?

  Bobby shot pictures of the old man, his shutter going off at intervals. He’d seen the exchange between Clovis and the naked dancer, but he was too busy trying concentrate on his own job to say anything. Besides, you couldn’t talk anyway. The music dominated everything.

  Using existing light was damn near impossible, but Bobby was determined to shoot without flash, which he thought would ruin the party. The torches and bonfires provided uneven and constantly flickering light.

  All the while, the amazing music pulsed. The band seemed to have doubled in size while Clovis and Bobby weren’t looking, because now there were fifty or so musicians going great guns. Clovis
remembered Gysin saying that once the music started, everything else stopped. He said it would be hard to concentrate; that the trancelike music sucked you in, that to fight it would make you insane.

  Clovis believed him. The horns cried and ululated, like centuries of grieving Arab women, shrieking above the cacophonous wall of sound. Clovis acted as a stone age Phil Spector with the four-thousand-year-old wall of sound mix. He kept checking the levels of the microphones so they wouldn’t distort. He was getting a good clean signal.

  The lack of anything resembling a standard Western melody was disconcerting. Suddenly, Clovis was uneasy. The old man was on the move now, the knife between his teeth.

  The sound of a camera clicking distracted Clovis enough to notice Bobby still shooting pictures. Clovis glanced at Bobby and nodded. Bobby nodded back.

  Yeah, you said there would be weird shit. How weird can it get?

  What happened next took them all by surprise.

  Someone released a terrified goat into the crowd. The people moved back, forming a circle, as the trapped goat ran from side to side, frantic to escape. After much dancing, the old man jumped on the goat and pretended to hump it. He reached around with the knife, and with one practiced motion, slit the belly of the goat open. Blood and entrails spilled out onto the ground. The music hit another crescendo. The goat bucked one last time, then died twitching in the old man’s arms.

  The music was so loud it was impossible to think, louder than a rock band, louder than the Stones themselves. But it wasn’t just volume of sound, it was psychically loud, broadcasting into their brains at fifty thousand watts on the astral plane.

  The old man laid the goat on the ground and began to remove its internal organs. Bobby and Clovis gagged more than once, but the tapes kept rolling and the band kept playing. While they watched, the old man picked up the freshly skinned goat and got inside the carcass. It draped over his shoulders, the goat’s head above his head, the hooves hanging uselessly, dripping blood. He began to dance again.

  Gysin looked at Bobby and mouthed the words, “Master of Skins.”

  The old man in the goatskin danced for hours. When, at last, he threw it off, he was covered in blood mixed with goat fat. At one point during a frenzied moment of particularly intense music, the old man danced over to Brian.